Page 52 of Bonded By Stone & Blood

"Thank you, Vel."

She unrolls a strip of fresh linen from the kit on her belt and reaches for my bandages. Her hands are rough and efficient. She doesn't pretend the unwrapping doesn't hurt.

"The perimeter held through the night," she says, keeping her eyes on her work. "Three scouts reported movement on the north ridge. Nothing came down."

"He's keeping them back."

She pauses. Just briefly. "We don't know that."

"I know that."

Velka ties off the linen and sits back, studying me with those steady copper-brown eyes. She looks tired. She has looked tired since the fire took her home.

"Sabine." Her voice is quiet. "Stay here."

"Vel—"

"I'm not finished." She folds her hands between her knees, leaning forward. "I know what he is to you. I'm not stupid and I'm not blind. But what you feel and what is survivable are two entirely different things. You go back up that mountain and Tharros will use you to break him completely. You said it yourself."

"He let you walk away," she continues. "That means he can live without you if he has to. Let him."

The words land somewhere soft and they hurt in a way the claw wounds don't. Because she isn't saying it to be cruel. She is saying it because she believes it, because from where she stands—from where any reasonable human in this valley stands—the math is simple. Lesser creature, greater risk. Remove the variable, save the equation.

I almost agree with her. I am still lying here counting tent stitches and agreeing with her when the shadows at the edge of the tent shift.

Velka is on her feet with her blade drawn before I can sit up. The shadow that detaches from the canvas is enormous—darkslate skin, wings folded so tight against his back they look like carved stone.

Vorgrym.

"Put it away," he says to Velka. "If I came to kill either of you, you would not have heard me enter."

Velka sheathes the blade but doesn't step back.

Vorgrym turns to me. "There is something you need to know."

He doesn't sit. He stays standing in the tent and speaks in low, careful sentences, like a commander delivering intelligence before a battle—which is, I suppose, exactly what this is. He begins where I left off in the crypt archives. Sevrik's letters, the inside collaborator I found referenced to in the ledger.

I know all this. I read it. But somewhere in the hours between then and now the cold fact of it had been buried under grief and guilt and the sight of Tovian’s face when I pulled my hand from his.

And then Vorgrym goes further.

"There was a second signature on the original sealing orders," he says. His voice is low and grounding. "A gargoyle mark. It was smeared, the ink bled into the parchment by time or intent, but the rank is unmistakable. An Ashwing General".

I shift my aching joints, the silver markings on my wrists itching with a sudden, cold tension. "You don't know which one?"

"The seal is fractured. It could belong to any of the inner circle who stood beside Tovian before the sleep," Vorgrym admits, his good eye fixed on the tent flap as if watching for shadows.

"I said nothing because to bring a half-truth to Tovian now is to hand a torch to a man standing in a powder magazine. If he suspects his own commanders of the ancient betrayal before I have a name, he will tear the territory apart looking for a ghost.He will go on a witch hunt that ends in a massacre of the very few kin he has left".

Someone in the Ashwing rank orchestrated the ancient massacre to isolate Tovian. To prove that loyalty between species breeds catastrophe. And now Tharros is doing it with me. With the mate bond. With every rival general who watches Tovian flinch when I'm threatened and calls it weakness. Tharros doesn't need to kill Tovian. He needs Tovian to destroy himself.

And I walked out.

I gave them exactly what they needed. I took the one thing that was keeping Tovian's restraint intact and I handed it to his enemies wrapped in good intentions.

"Sabine." Velka's voice is careful now. "Whatever you're thinking?—"

"I have to go back."